Gas station owners are complaining about losing money as fuel prices begin to decrease, while the national movement to transition to electric vehicles increases in part to curb reliance on overseas fuel.
Author’s Note
This article is based on corporate postings and accredited media reports. Linked information within this article is attributed to the following outlets: Axios.com, Google.com, Gasbuddy.com, WSJ.com, LATimes.com, Reuters.com, and NPR.org.
Introduction
A July 15 report from Axios.com, “Gas Stations’ Long Decline,” received substantial industry attention, as a targeted Google search will verify.
As excerpted from the article, elucidating the present ‘big picture’ nature of the matter: President Biden is accusing gas stations of profiteering from high oil price, and at least four California cities have banned new stations. But most gas stations aren't owned by big multinational corporations, and the ups and downs of fuel prices is likely cutting into many of their bottom lines. Gas prices, after spiking upwards, have now declined for 30 consecutive days, per Gasbuddy. That's good news for drivers, but terrible news for gas-station owners.
Jeff Lenard of NACS, the trade association for convenience stores, is quoted in the piece, which goes on to state the rise of electric vehicles is further squeezing profits from gas station owners, and also compares the current situation to that of the last great gas spike from 2008: As the WSJ explains, when the gas station refills its own tanks, it buys weeks' worth of fuel — sometimes months' worth, in the case of diesel — at a single high price. If prices then start to fall, the gas station is forced to sell at below its own cost. The 2008 spike in gas prices was responsible for the demise of hundreds of gas stations, Lenard said.
Let us explore.
Electric Vehicles, 2022
A July 11 article from The Los Angeles Times, “California Cities Ban New Gas Stations in Battle to Combat Climate Change,” stated: Without realizing they were starting a movement in green energy policy, leaders of a small Sonoma County city seem to have done just that when they questioned the approval process for a new gas station — eventually halting its development and others in the future.“We didn’t know what we were doing, actually,” said Petaluma Councilwoman D’Lynda Fischer, who led the charge last year to prohibit new gas stations in the city of 60,000. “We didn’t know we were the first in the world when we banned gas stations.”
As the article further mentions, four other cities in the Bay Area have followed suit since the Petaluma decision, and now leaders are hoping for an expansion of the tactic throughout Southern California.
The process goes to follow a federal plan to entirely eliminate the government’s purchase of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. See Reuters.com press release here.
From the release, titled “U.S. Government to End Gas-Powered Vehicle Purchases by 2035 Under Biden Order”: The U.S. government plans to end purchases of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 in a move to lower emissions and promote electric cars under an executive order signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday. The government owns more than 650,000 vehicles and purchases about 50,000 annually. Biden's executive order said that light-duty vehicles acquired by the government will be emission-free by 2027. Total federal government operations will reduce emissions by 65% by 2030 under the plan. The government will seek to consume electricity only from carbon-free and non-polluting sources on a net annual basis by 2030 and have net-zero emissions by 2050.
Such a move is hoped by climate activists to entirely eliminate gas-powered vehicles from U.S. roads within the same period.
Per NPR.org’s “Giving Up Gas-Powered Cars Was a Fringe Idea. It's Now on its Way to Reality,” what was once science fiction may soon become fact: Tesla is now the world's most valuable automaker. Multiple automakers say they will cease production of gas- and diesel-powered cars within the next two decades. And what was once a fringe idea is now part of a global trend: momentum is building for the idea that zero-emission vehicles, primarily electric ones, are the future of the auto industry. "More and more countries are announcing targets to to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles at the national level," Sandra Wappelhorst, who has tracked this trend for the International Council on Clean Transportation, told NPR earlier this year.
Conclusion
Should it happen, the expected formal national transition to all-electric cars is still several years if not decades away, though industry experts anticipate a future announcement as to the outright banning of all gas vehicles with a deadline date.
No longer relying on fuel and oil from overseas is one stated goal; bringing down the cost of electric vehicles is another as is duration of mileage with a single charge.
I will report updates here, on NewsBreak, as they happen.
Thank you for reading.
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